Annunciation (Christus)

The Annunciation (commonly the Friedsam Annunciation)^[2] is a c. 1445 oil-on-oak panel painting by the Early Netherlandish artist Petrus Christus (d. 1476). It shows the biblical annunciation according to the Gospel of Luke, marking the announcement by the archangel Gabriel to Mary that she will conceive and bear a son through a virgin birth and become the mother of Jesus Christ.

Anunciacion
Artist	Petrus Christus
Year	c. 1445[1]
Type	Oil-on-oak panel painting
Dimensions	78.7 cm × 65.7 cm (31.0 in × 25.9 in)
Location	Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The panel contains a number of perspective and spatial anomalies that make it especially complex. The viewer has a bird's eye view, the framing is slightly left-of-centre, while the lack of a view of a horizon indicates that it was somewhat unskilfully cut down on three sides from a larger painting: art historians generally assume that it is a remnant of the left-hand wing of a triptych altarpiece.^[3]

The panel was bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1931 by the businessman and art collector Michael Friedsam.

Description

Detail of Gabriel's wings and hand raised on blessing

Mary is announced by the Gabriel who kneels before her. She wears a blue robe and reads from a small book of hours as a dove hovers above her. Gabriel has brightly coloured wings and wears red and white liturgical vestments.^[4] She stands in a slightly elevated niche at the church's doorway, dressed in blue and holding a small prayerbook, most likely a book of hours.

To her left and before her, Gabriel kneels in what appears to be an enclosed garden, a common motif to symbolise chastity. He wears a white dress covered by a bright red overcoat.^[5]

The floor of the niche is lined with multicoloured tiles decorated with geometric and floral patterns. The steps of the church are lined by the words "REGINA CELI LET[ARE]" ("Queen of Heaven, Rejoice"), which are painted but presented as if inscriptions.^[6]

Annunciation, Jan van Eyck, c. 1434–1436. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

The architecture of the church is complex, with features of the Romanesque on the right and Gothic on the left. Art historians thus interpret the building as marking the changes brought by the transition from the Old to the New Testaments.^[1]

• 
  Annunciation, Melchior Broederlam, c. 1398. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon
• 
  Detail from a folio from the Hours of Jean de Boucicaut, c. 1405–1408. Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris
• 
  Nativity, Robert Campin, c. 1420. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon

Attribution

The panel was thought to be by Hubert van Eyck throughout the 19th century, until his better-known brother Jan, became more favoured from the early 20th century. This debate occurred during a period when Early Netherlandish painting (ENA) was undergoing a resurgence in interest and reappraisal, and new research was shedding light on identifying the individual artists and their artistic development.^[7][8]

The Three Marys at the Tomb, painted or begun by Hubert van Eyck, c. 1410–1420

By the 1930s, the attribution had become a matter of contention between the leading ENA scholars Erwin Panofsky (who attributed Jan van Eyck) and Max Jakob Friedländer (who favoured Christus), with other art historians taking the "middle view" that it was a copy Christus had made of a lost Jan van Eyck painting.^[7]

Writing in 1935,Panofsky dismissed the possibility of Christus' hand on the basis that its "composition, colourisation and perspective" are too old-fashioned ("archaic") to have been completed during Christus' mature period. He concluded that the Friedsam Annunciation was "beyond the capabilities of Petrus Christus, who, with all his skill and soundness, never achieved that peculiar richness and...homogeneous density which distinguishes the works of the brothers van Eyck."^[9]

It has been confidently attributed to Christus since the 1960s.^[6][8]

Provenance

The businessman and leading art collector Michael Friedsam bequeathed the panel to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on his death in 1931,^[8] as part of a much larger donation that included important Northern Renaissance works by Gerard David, Vermeer, Rembrandt and Pieter de Hooch.^[10]